Federalist No. 23

The Necessity of a Government as Energetic as the One Proposed
to the Preservation of the Union
From the New York Packet.
Tuesday, December 18, 1787.

Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York:

THE necessity of a Constitution, at least equally energetic with
the one proposed, to the preservation of the Union, is the point at
the examination of which we are now arrived.

This inquiry will naturally divide itself into three branches
the objects to be provided for by the federal government, the
quantity of power necessary to the accomplishment of those objects,
the persons upon whom that power ought to operate. Its distribution
and organization will more properly claim our attention under the
succeeding head.

The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the
common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace
as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the
regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States;
the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial,
with foreign countries.

The authorities essential to the common defense are these: to
raise armies; to build and equip fleets; to prescribe rules for the
government of both; to direct their operations; to provide for
their support. These powers ought to exist without limitation,
BECAUSE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO FORESEE OR DEFINE THE EXTENT AND
VARIETY OF NATIONAL EXIGENCIES, OR THE CORRESPONDENT EXTENT AND
VARIETY OF THE MEANS WHICH MAY BE NECESSARY TO SATISFY THEM. The
circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite, and
for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on
the power to which the care of it is committed. This power ought to
be coextensive with all the possible combinations of such
circumstances; and ought to be under the direction of the same
councils which are appointed to preside over the common
defense.

This is one of those truths which, to a correct and unprejudiced
mind, carries its own evidence along with it; and may be obscured,
but cannot be made plainer by argument or reasoning. It rests upon
axioms as simple as they are universal; the MEANS ought to be
proportioned to the END; the persons, from whose agency the
attainment of any END is expected, ought to possess the MEANS by
which it is to be attained.

Whether there ought to be a federal government intrusted with
the care of the common defense, is a question in the first
instance, open for discussion; but the moment it is decided in the
affirmative, it will follow, that that government ought to be
clothed with all the powers requisite to complete execution of its
trust. And unless it can be shown that the circumstances which may
affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate
limits; unless the contrary of this position can be fairly and
rationally disputed, it must be admitted, as a necessary
consequence, that there can be no limitation of that authority
which is to provide for the defense and protection of the
community, in any matter essential to its efficacy that is, in any
matter essential to the FORMATION, DIRECTION, or SUPPORT of the
NATIONAL FORCES.

Defective as the present Confederation has been proved to be,
this principle appears to have been fully recognized by the framers
of it; though they have not made proper or adequate provision for
its exercise. Congress have an unlimited discretion to make
requisitions of men and money; to govern the army and navy; to
direct their operations. As their requisitions are made
constitutionally binding upon the States, who are in fact under the
most solemn obligations to furnish the supplies required of them,
the intention evidently was that the United States should command
whatever resources were by them judged requisite to the "common
defense and general welfare." It was presumed that a sense of
their true interests, and a regard to the dictates of good faith,
would be found sufficient pledges for the punctual performance of
the duty of the members to the federal head.

The experiment has, however, demonstrated that this expectation
was ill-founded and illusory; and the observations, made under the
last head, will, I imagine, have sufficed to convince the impartial
and discerning, that there is an absolute necessity for an entire
change in the first principles of the system; that if we are in
earnest about giving the Union energy and duration, we must abandon
the vain project of legislating upon the States in their collective
capacities; we must extend the laws of the federal government to
the individual citizens of America; we must discard the fallacious
scheme of quotas and requisitions, as equally impracticable and
unjust. The result from all this is that the Union ought to be
invested with full power to levy troops; to build and equip fleets;
and to raise the revenues which will be required for the formation
and support of an army and navy, in the customary and ordinary
modes practiced in other governments.

If the circumstances of our country are such as to demand a
compound instead of a simple, a confederate instead of a sole,
government, the essential point which will remain to be adjusted
will be to discriminate the OBJECTS, as far as it can be done,
which shall appertain to the different provinces or departments of
power; allowing to each the most ample authority for fulfilling the
objects committed to its charge. Shall the Union be constituted the
guardian of the common safety? Are fleets and armies and revenues
necessary to this purpose? The government of the Union must be
empowered to pass all laws, and to make all regulations which have
relation to them. The same must be the case in respect to commerce,
and to every other matter to which its jurisdiction is permitted to
extend. Is the administration of justice between the citizens of
the same State the proper department of the local governments?
These must possess all the authorities which are connected with
this object, and with every other that may be allotted to their
particular cognizance and direction. Not to confer in each case a
degree of power commensurate to the end, would be to violate the
most obvious rules of prudence and propriety, and improvidently to
trust the great interests of the nation to hands which are disabled
from managing them with vigor and success.

Who is likely to make suitable provisions for the public
defense, as that body to which the guardianship of the public
safety is confided; which, as the centre of information, will best
understand the extent and urgency of the dangers that threaten; as
the representative of the WHOLE, will feel itself most deeply
interested in the preservation of every part; which, from the
responsibility implied in the duty assigned to it, will be most
sensibly impressed with the necessity of proper exertions; and
which, by the extension of its authority throughout the States, can
alone establish uniformity and concert in the plans and measures by
which the common safety is to be secured? Is there not a manifest
inconsistency in devolving upon the federal government the care of
the general defense, and leaving in the State governments the
EFFECTIVE powers by which it is to be provided for? Is not a want
of co-operation the infallible consequence of such a system? And
will not weakness, disorder, an undue distribution of the burdens
and calamities of war, an unnecessary and intolerable increase of
expense, be its natural and inevitable concomitants? Have we not
had unequivocal experience of its effects in the course of the
revolution which we have just accomplished?

Every view we may take of the subject, as candid inquirers after
truth, will serve to convince us, that it is both unwise and
dangerous to deny the federal government an unconfined authority,
as to all those objects which are intrusted to its management. It
will indeed deserve the most vigilant and careful attention of the
people, to see that it be modeled in such a manner as to admit of
its being safely vested with the requisite powers. If any plan
which has been, or may be, offered to our consideration, should
not, upon a dispassionate inspection, be found to answer this
description, it ought to be rejected. A government, the
constitution of which renders it unfit to be trusted with all the
powers which a free people OUGHT TO DELEGATE TO ANY GOVERNMENT,
would be an unsafe and improper depositary of the NATIONAL
INTERESTS. Wherever THESE can with propriety be confided, the
coincident powers may safely accompany them. This is the true
result of all just reasoning upon the subject. And the adversaries
of the plan promulgated by the convention ought to have confined
themselves to showing, that the internal structure of the proposed
government was such as to render it unworthy of the confidence of
the people. They ought not to have wandered into inflammatory
declamations and unmeaning cavils about the extent of the powers.
The POWERS are not too extensive for the OBJECTS of federal
administration, or, in other words, for the management of our
NATIONAL INTERESTS; nor can any satisfactory argument be framed to
show that they are chargeable with such an excess. If it be true,
as has been insinuated by some of the writers on the other side,
that the difficulty arises from the nature of the thing, and that
the extent of the country will not permit us to form a government
in which such ample powers can safely be reposed, it would prove
that we ought to contract our views, and resort to the expedient of
separate confederacies, which will move within more practicable
spheres. For the absurdity must continually stare us in the face of
confiding to a government the direction of the most essential
national interests, without daring to trust it to the authorities
which are indispensible to their proper and efficient management.
Let us not attempt to reconcile contradictions, but firmly embrace
a rational alternative.

I trust, however, that the impracticability of one general
system cannot be shown. I am greatly mistaken, if any thing of
weight has yet been advanced of this tendency; and I flatter
myself, that the observations which have been made in the course of
these papers have served to place the reverse of that position in
as clear a light as any matter still in the womb of time and
experience can be susceptible of. This, at all events, must be
evident, that the very difficulty itself, drawn from the extent of
the country, is the strongest argument in favor of an energetic
government; for any other can certainly never preserve the Union of
so large an empire. If we embrace the tenets of those who oppose
the adoption of the proposed Constitution, as the standard of our
political creed, we cannot fail to verify the gloomy doctrines
which predict the impracticability of a national system pervading
entire limits of the present Confederacy.